Nicholas Culpeper: English physician and astrologer

1'ancienne the'orie humorale (p. xi), preferring the simpler Hippocratic model. Starobinski concludes that the non-Galenic systems of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries-from Paracelsus to Hahnemann-were no less speculative and dogmatic than Galenism itself, even Cartesian mechanism which, albeit discarding Galen's teleology, stuck to constructions hypothetico-d6ductives. In their introduction the authors give a brief exposition of Galen's ethics and moral psychology. According to them, Galen adopted the Stoic scheme of passions, but used the Platonic hierarchy of the parts of the soul to oppose their psychology. The authors make the interesting suggestion that, for Galen, the tripartition of the soul is paralleled by similar patterns in anthropology (p. xxxvii). However, they are not clear about the relationship between errors and passions in Galen, failing at times to make the distinction between the two meanings of &igap'r¶ga, i.e. error deriving from a failed exercise of rational judgement and error in the more general sense, including those failures of rational judgement which result from its subordination to passion (V,2f. Kuhn). By reducing the punishment of wrongdoers to a purely legal issue, the authors avoid the question whether physiological determinism and morality can be reconciled. This represents one side of the ambiguity pointed out by Starobinski (p. xxvi): determinism can be used as a means of excuse, as for medieval sufferers from melancholy accused of being sorcerers, but likewise to justify harsh punishments required to rid the corps social of incorrigible wrongdoers. It would still have been useful for the general reader to be given references to the Stoic attempts at reconciling fate and morality (e.g. Cicero, On fate, 39 ff. and Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, VII, 2). The translations are readable ,and reliable, only thata' &i;8iSo rtrtapa etvat (V, 59 Kuhn) ought to be que deuxfois (and not et) deuxfont quatre (p. 44). These treatises had been made accessible in French before (by van der Elst in 1914 and Daremberg in 1854, respectively). The present translators, however, had more recent critical editions at their disposal and found an eminent historian of ideas to persuade a broader public to take an interest not only in Galenism, but also in Galen's own writings, which laid the foundation for one and a half millenia of science and scholarship. This fortunate combination makes their book an important contribution to the popularization of Galenic studies.